Formula One News — March 2002

It has not been an easy time for Jaguar Racing but in Brazil, with a little help from Michelin tires, the cars were much more competitive with Pedro de la Rosa 11th and Eddie Irvine 13th.

Germany's Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin is warning that allowing Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's media empire to gain an important voice in the German media through the Kirch group would be a mistake for Germany.

At Spa last year Ricardo Sperafico won his first Formula 3000 victory for the Petrobras Junior Team. At Interlagos his identical twin brother Rodrigo took his Durango Formula Lola-built F1-lookalike Formula 3000 car to victory ahead of three other Brazilians.

Formula 1 had a near-miss during the Sunday morning warm-up in Sao Paulo when the FIA Medical Car was despatched to deal with a big accident involving Enrique Bernoldi.

As we exclusively predicted yesterday there were problems over the tire allowances in Brazil with the FIA agreeing to allow Michael Schumacher to have four sets of tires for the 2001 car and four sets of tires for the 2002 car on Saturday.

Christian Geistdorfer made his name as the co-driver of double World Rally Champion Walter Rohrl in the early 1980s.

The Formula 1 paddock in Sao Paulo was busy with visiting VIPs.

Jordan will shortly lose Giselle Davies, its head of corporate communications. Davies is to become the Director of Communications of the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne.

Tom Walkinshaw's TWR Group has just landed a deal, rumored to be worth $450m, with MG Rover, relating to the recently announced alliance between the British car company and China Brilliance.

There will be more wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth in the Formula 1 paddock about the collapse of Reynard.

Although senior team members were saying a few weeks ago that Pat Symonds was going to leave the Renault F1 team at the end of the year, the team has now put out a press statement to clarify the situation.

Ferrari may have turned up in Brazil with one F2002 and three F2001 chassis but the idea that Michael Schumacher will be able to leap from car to car is rather more complicated a concept than many would have thought.

The city of Dubai is planning to host a major international single-seater race in December on a street circuit laid out in the town.

The staff changes at British American Racing are now becoming a little clearer with the news that the cuts are across the board rather than being concentrated in one or two departments.

Although Arrows has done quite well so far this year (if one overlooks the three failures to start in the last two races) but we have still not seen any official action from Jos Verstappen, dropped by the team at the last minute to make room for Heinz-Harald Frentzen.

The collapse of Reynard Motorsport has cast serious doubts on the plans for the Premier 1 racing series.

We hear that McLaren and Williams may be willing to challenge the new one engine per weekend rule agreed recently by the World Motor Sports Council.

The DAMS team will be running two cars in this year's Le Mans 24 Hours as camera cars for the planned Luc Besson film about the classic French sportcar race.

Max Mosley told the BBC's Hard Talk program that the British GP is not under threat from the proposed race in Moscow.

Moscow's deputy mayor and head of the city's Tourism Committee Grigory Antyufeyev is sure that the Russian Grand Prix will be going ahead in 2004 and he says that he expects a deal to be signed with Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone within the next month.

The BBC's Tim Sebastian is famous for his direct and often abrasive interviewing techniques and his Hard Talk program has become very popular around the world as a result of the BBC World satellite channel.

It has been expected for some time but the Japanese car company Nissan has now confirmed that to strengthen its ties with Renault (which owns a controlling 44.4% of Nissan) it is to buy 13.5% of the French giant.

The recent crime wave in Brazil, about which we reported some months ago, has woken up even the most blinkered of Formula 1 individuals and the teams have been warned to be careful to avoid robberies and kidnappings.

Discussions over the possible implementation of a Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, an anti-smoking treaty being promoted by the World Health Organisation, have just finished in Geneva.

Jacky Ickx was interviewed recently by the Gulf News and said that he believes that the Middle Eastern nations which are currently fighting one another to host a Grand Prix in the region should club together and work together rather than battle to be the one and only F1 race in the Middle East.